Mari0
Mari0 is a 2012 side-scrolling platform video game developed by Germanhttps://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/10/17/prepare-to-want-mari0-is-remarkable/ indie developer Maurice Guégan and released onto his website Stabyourself.net. It combines gameplay elements from Nintendo's Super Mario series and Valve Corporation's Portal series. The game features Mario armed with a "Portal Gun", allowing him to create two inter-spatial portals on 2-dimensional surfaces, which can transport himself, enemies and other objects through them. It ran on the LÖVE framework. Beginning development in 2011, it was intended to be a direct port of the original Super Mario Bros. with the 4-player multiplayer system used in New Super Mario Bros. Wii - after Guégan viewed a Dorkly video titled Mario With A Portal Gun, the game was modified to include elements from the Portal series. The game quickly gained traction through online blogs and news sites, and has been downloaded nearly 1.6 million times. It was well-received by critics for its creativity and simplistic concept. A sequel, Mari0: Special Edition, was planned for release at an unknown date, however was soon cancelled in 2015 following technical constraints. Gameplay The core game of Mari0 plays directly from the 8-bit Super Mario Bros. 2D platform game, where the player controls Mario via the keyboard, running and jumping through levels, avoiding or jumping on enemies to defeat them, while collecting coins to earn points towards their score. The game adds the concept of the "portal gun" from the Portal series; the player can click with the mouse device on two separate surfaces on the level to create a portal between them. This can be used for a number of gameplay options, often using vertical momentum entering one portal to "fling" the Mario character horizontally out of the other portal, but will also affect enemies and other game elements in similar manners. The core game uses the level designs from the original Super Mario Bros. as well as sets of test chambers inspired by Portal s Aperture Science. A level editor, along with different graphic sets and shaders, are provided to create new content. Up to four players can cooperatively play in the game. On August 12, 2015, development on Mari0: Special Edition, a large update to Mari0, was cancelled. However, the beta versions of this update can be found on the website's forums. Development The original idea for Mari0 was to make a clone of Super Mario Bros. but with the multiplayer element that New Super Mario Bros. Wii had. However, after seeing a video on the humor site Dorkly entitled Mario With A Portal Gun, Maurice decided he would add a portal gun as well.The Interview: Mario - Obsolete GamerDorkly Bits: Mario With A Portal Gun - Dorkly Development began in January 2011 by Maurice Guégan, the lead programmer of Stabyourself.net. He frequently created blog posts keeping followers up to date with the latest Mari0 developments, including a month-long screenshot marathon of Mari0 updates. Several teasers and videos were posted and a speculated release date of Christmas 2011 was proposed, although this was later pushed towards New Year's Eve 2011,Stabyourself.net news archive - No Christmas release! :( - Stabyourself.net and then postponed further until beta testing had been completed and Maurice was satisfied with the release. The final release date was posted as a puzzle and was quickly decoded to reveal March 3, 2012 as the release date.Stabyourself.net news archive - It's a riddle - Stabyourself.net An accompanying count-down timer was also placed on the Stabyourself.net homepage.Stabyourself.net news archive - Countdown! - Stabyourself.net The first official release was made alongside the publishing of a trailer video.Stabyourself.net news archive - Mari0 RELEASED!! - Stabyourself.net Several updates were released shortly after the game's launch to add a few new features, extra sets of levels, and fix many bugs.Mari0 1.6! Riot shield, famas and galil - Stabyourself.net The code was also uploaded to a public GitHub repository with recent changes featuring a few minor bug fixes and updates to newer versions of LÖVE. On May 1, 2012, Mari0: Special Edition was announced. It was an update to the game which was planned to feature the originally delayed online multiplayer, along with several other features for use in custom levels, such as vertical maps, custom characters, and more elements from Portal 2. Development continued on for several years and a few beta versions were released to the forums. However, after over a year of silence about the update, it was confirmed as being cancelled on August 12, 2015. Reception Mari0 has been covered on various technology and video game websites. It has gained a lot of attention on sites such as YouTubeMari0 on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtcGiZelPfk and Reddit.Mari0 on reddit The game has been well received on various video game blog sites. John Walker of Rock, Paper, Shotgun stated "If it doesn't make you gasp and want to post it to the rest of the internet, then I simply don't understand you."Prepare To Want: Mari0 Is Remarkable - by John Walker on Rock, Paper, Shotgun (2011) One year after the release, the game had accumulated 1.6 million downloads from the website according to the developers.mari0-is-1-year-old-today on stabyourself.net "Mari0 so far clocked in 1,696,644 downloads (not counting third party websites), with Windows having 88.88%, OSX 6.09%, Linux 3.18% and source 1.85% of the downloads. It is played (details here) on average over 10 thousand times every single day." See also * List of open source games References External links * Category:2012 video games Category:Fangames Category:Freeware games Category:Indie video games Category:Linux games Category:MacOS games Category:Open-source platform games Category:Unofficial works based on Mario Category:Portal (video game series) Category:Windows games Category:Creative Commons-licensed video games Category:Multiplayer and single-player video games Category:Video games developed in Germany Category:Video games with available source code